Communist secret service officials act on public debate in Bulgaria, report on level of participants in parliamentary conference
Former Communist Secret Service officials take part in a public debate in Bulgaria in an attempt to distort, summarize members of a conference in Brussels, dedicated to disinformation and propaganda against the EU and the role of former services in Central and Eastern Europe. The meeting was organized by the European People’s Party (EPP) MEP Asim Ademov and Alexander Yordanov.
In addition to the war in Ukraine, it is carrying out former agents who are spreading Kremlin propaganda, including efforts to weaken the EU, Ademov said. According to him, President Rumen Radev is also involved in pursuing pro-Kremlin policy.
Personnel of the State Security and Military Intelligence have become mouthpieces of Kremlin propaganda, part of the hybrid war against the EU, adds Alexander Yordanov. He says that we have parties and politicians, leaders of the Kremlin and among them also the named head of state. Russia’s influence over the ruling parties is so great that Ukraine does not need military assistance. There is a united political front in Bulgaria against the EU sanctions policy – socialists, nationalists, Russophile civil society organizations, Yordanov added.
The co-chair of the Atlantic Council in Bulgaria, Momchil Doychev, called the events in Ukraine a “war against the entire civilized world.” According to him, there is a hybrid aggression against the basic European values of peace and prosperity. The Russian Federation sees Bulgaria as a weak element against which to show aggression after the end of the post-Soviet space. The Russian Federation treats Bulgaria as a captive country, where the numerous Russian agencies are calm and can hopelessly carry out their subversive activities, additional.
According to him, there is now a need for “de-Russification”, while a dozen Russian disinformation channels are still broadcast in Bulgaria. He outlined as a problem that many Bulgarians understand Russian.
Russian propaganda leads to the constant creation of new pro-Russian and anti-European parties. “Vazrazhdane” is a serious threat to Bulgaria’s national security, but there is no action by the Interior Ministry, the prosecutor’s office and the services – this is a huge threat to the last Euro-Atlantic future, Doychev commented. According to him, we cannot say that the average Bulgarian values are the struggle for freedom and for their values coincide with the European ones and not with the Eurasian ones.
Antoniy Galabov from the New Bulgarian University (NBU) appears that in Bulgaria pro-Kremlin propaganda is preserved most clearly and public opinion is very different from the EU average. Our research deeply penetrates the basic clichés of pro-Kremlin propaganda. We know this propaganda and we can counteract it very well. For decades, patterns of behavior have been entering Bulgaria, displacing the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and replacing it with Russian rites – these are long waves of propaganda, part of the concept of the Russian world, he explained. The Russian Federation has no reason to believe that it is better, so it is trying to show that everyone is worse. If a country is so religious, why did it continue to fight during Lent and even Easter, he asked about the ongoing Russian military strikes in Ukraine.
MEP Andrei Kovachev (EPP) appears that the artifacts of the communist regime are everywhere in Bulgaria, although the regime has been declared criminal by law. New generations are surrounded by these artifacts, and for them Lenin and September 9 are something acceptable. Our history has been falsified by the communists and now I want to present it to the new generation, Kovachev added. He defined as part of the dissemination of disinformation the fact that the Bulgarian media invite interlocutors to present the so-called called “another point”.
Haralan Alexandrov (NBU) said that conspiracy theories, well spread in our country, convince of the impossibility of influencing the environment and breaking the trust in public authorities. Thinking that we are a unique and misunderstood culture, and that all Western decisions are doomed to failure, is leading to growing popularity among nationalist organizations. There is a deep conviction that the world is going badly and that attempts to change it are futile. In this environment, it is dangerous to try to change the world for the better, and this leads to a battle with the natural human need for self-realization. These pessimistic views clash with Western thinking about development. This is the soil on which the propaganda sprouts, Alexandrov summed up.